A Vanderbilt University Political Science professor is telling cable news pundits that they're drawing the wrong conclusions about the 2024 elections' results.
Taking to X on Thursday, John Sides said that those interpreting Donald Trump's win as some kind of ideological mandate are wrong.
"It doesn't help explain why parties of all ideologies lost vote share post-COVID," said Sides.
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"It exaggerates how much voters vote based on policy. So much PoliSci shows how difficult that is and how, in fact, it's often the reverse: voters choose policies based on whatever their preferred candidate is advocating," he continued.
He also said that his biggest laughs come from the takeover of new political leaders from one party or another, and they believe that it means the voters are making a decision about the direction of the country.
"And then voters...go in the opposite direction," Sides said. "This is the thermostatic model of public opinion. I said the same thing after 2012, lest you think this is motivated by opposition to Trump."
He wrote at the time these elections are very rarely mandated, pointing to those who've made the same comments in 2004, 2008 and 2012.
"I’ll say it again," he wrote at the time. "Voters don’t make choices by first formulating views on all sorts of issues, then figuring out where the candidates stand on these issues, and then choosing the candidate whose views best represent their own. In fact, often that story runs in reverse: they choose a candidate based on party or whatever, and then line up their views on issues to match the candidates."
